ASHES ↠ b. barnes [II]

EPILOGUE

       TO SAY THE ASSETS WERE used to sad endings would be an understatement. They were used to their lives being catastrophic, messy, cruel and to a certain point, rather exhausting to live in. Sometimes, they asked themselves how they had managed to survive; taking into account their flaws and their skills:

       Allura was an over thinker. Every once in a while, that would be helpful. But then, there would be cases, when this peculiarity could cause more trouble than bring solutions.

       James, on the other hand, was slightly impulsive. He acted before he thought, and even though being on the run had helped him control his actions, this nature of his was still pretty visible; specially when they needed to go to the HYDRA base and he just wanted to go right away.

       Yeah. Not a chance.

       But Allura had calmed him down, and together, with her excess of thoughts and his determination to act, they had managed to get what they needed, and they were successful on their task.

       Also, Allura tended to judge rather quickly, specially when angry. This was something that she got from the war; when she was forced to separate people into allies and opponents, into friends and enemies. This was because no matter how many people she saved, there would always be others that would perish. So, her personality became colder, harsher, until it omitted emotions and became purely critical.

       But James wasn't. He wasn't used to seeing things in black and white; not before the war, at least. But he always managed to make a background out of people, to imagine their reasons for doing things and for their thoughts.

       So, together, they saved lives with their strong characters but empathetic customs.

       However, now, no amount of flaws or skills combined could save them from yet another tragic departure. No amount of prayers to Allt, or any terrestrial God, seemed enough to predict this ordeal at hand:

       The sokovian using the words on them made them realize that their minds were still in the blender. They were still exposed and weak when it came to those mundane words written down on a couple of seemingly ordinary books.

       But there was nothing mundane behind those words, and there was nothing ordinary behind those wretched old books.

       There was just a background of torture, abuse, control, murder, assassination, pain, agony and death. And all of that was stuck in their heads, playing with their feelings and toying with their thoughts as if they were mere pawns on a live or die routine— which for years, they were.